Diffuse Logic, based in Barcelona, has introduced a new render engine called Bella. It is available as a standalone application and a plugin for Maya, with future implementations planned.
According to the developers, Bella is a spectral, physically-based renderer. It features a node-based scene description graph and an intuitive material model based on several material types, including Conductor and Dialectric. These can be layered to create complex materials.
Cameras are controlled using Camera, Lens, and Sensor modules. These modules use real-world settings, making them easy to use for artists familiar with photographic principles.
The camera node supports either fully manual exposure control or automated exposure compensation, with options for either aperture or shutter priority.
The Sensor node represents the physical camera sensor and provides control over film size, ISO, and sharpness. It also simulates sensor diffraction and bloom.
Finally, the Lens node supports optional vignetting, lens shift, and the choice of diaphragm shape and rotation. It also includes a lens filter stack for adding lens filters like diffraction or ND filters.
Lights are either mesh-based, using emitter materials, or created using one of four types of procedural objects for point, area, directional, and spot effects.
Bella features four solvers for producing beauty renders. The default solver is Atlas, an unbiased bi-directional path tracer. It is designed to be highly optimized for complex lighting scenarios.
Similar to Atlas is Ares, an unbiased non-bi-directional path tracer. According to the developers, it may render faster than Atlas in scenes with less complex lighting.
Apollo is a quasi-unbiased solver using a proprietary new method. The developers claim that it can solve lighting scenarios traditionally infeasible for bi-directional path tracers. It is intended that this solver will become the default once it is thoroughly tested and tweaked.
Finally, there is also an IPR solver for quick previews. Both production and IPR rendering can be denoised using Intel’s OpenImageDenoise library.
Bella is available as a standalone application that can render scenes exported from other DCCs. Native plugins will also be offered. At the time of reporting, a Maya plugin is available. There are plans to support Rhinoceros, SketchUp, Cinema 4D, and 3DS Max.
Bella is currently available for an open pre-release beta. Users who submit images during this period may receive discounts on the final release.
For more information, visit the product’s website.
